


her voice is full of money

by fallen_woman



Category: Mad Men
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-10-17
Updated: 2010-10-17
Packaged: 2017-10-12 17:52:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/127480
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallen_woman/pseuds/fallen_woman
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>S1 throwback. Kinsey and Campbell aren't the only failed writers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	her voice is full of money

Francine offered to lend her own copy of _The Sandcastle_ , but Betty demurred. Francine folded the pages in her books, and she even wrote — in red! — in the margins. Usually an arrow, and a thick star, for passages she liked. A check, for parts she liked but didn’t quite understand.

“I can’t help it,” Francine said, tapping her cigarette on the counter ashtray. She still had some fat clinging to her cheeks, from the baby. Betty was starting to forget what her face looked like when they first met. “Sometimes that’s the best part—marking everything up.”

“In college, I never wrote in my textbooks,” Betty said. In ten minutes, she would have to pick up Sally from ballet. “Not even with pencil.”

“But when you own something, it’s yours.” Francine hefted her elbows onto the counter, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “Did you ever write in school? Stories, I mean.”

“I took a creative writing class my sophomore year; I wasn’t any good.” She frowned at the ease of the revelation—and wasn’t that the exhausting thing about friends, close friends like Francine, you had to keep feeding them, like children.

Francine, bless her, acted scandalized. “Nonsense! You’re such a good reader. Every time you speak in book club, Alice Pemberly looks like she wants to sink her fangs into you.”

“I don’t know if that’s reassuring.”

“Of course it is! Or maybe she’s just hungry. Have you seen her arms?” Francine’s nostrils swelled with offense. “I understand thinness is important, but she looks like she has rickets.”

Betty flutter-giggled into her club soda, the kind of laugh she perfected when she was fourteen and the sun was coming in so strong through the diner windows her body felt brittle and transparent. “You’re so wicked.”

“Only because you’re so good,” Francine scoffed. “I suppose you’re not going to tell me what you wrote about in school?”

“Nothing special. A witch here, a duchess there.” The characters never had life, is what her teacher told her. Never breathed, never ached, never died. _Because no matter how beautifully you describe something, Miss Hofstadt, it’s still the same thing._ “I never had any practice telling stories.”

Without looking at the clock, Francine rose from her chair and picked her purse up from the floor. Nowadays, they had each other’s schedules memorized. “You didn’t have a diary as a girl? The pink ones, with the little gold locks? Oh god, I loved mine. I wish I had it now.”

Betty walked her to the door. “If I had a diary,” she said, twisting her wristwatch, “no one would read it.”

“That’s kind of the point, dear.” Francine kissed her on the cheek, without actually touching her. “All my love to Sally.”

“You don’t understand,” Betty said, elbow against the doorway.  She squeezed a small smile, the one that wouldn’t hurt to hold, the one she perfected when she was ten in the reflections of car windows as her mother tugged her down the street. _No one would read it._


End file.
